There are several different types of, and tools for, lead nurturing. These are the ones we’ve seen the most often.

Online/Web

It all starts with your website — according to a FlipCreator study, one of the top three content marketing tactics are articles on their websites (83% of all B2B marketers use them). That’s the hub of your marketing campaign; everything else — search engines, social media, even offline marketing — is designed to send people here. This is where you catch their attention and keep it with top-notch videos, photos, website design, and web copy. It’s where you generate your leads, and escort them into your nurturing program through a newsletter subscription or special downloads.

Email Nurturing

We like email marketing — welcome messages, newsletters, invitations to special events — as one of our primary lead nurturing channels. According to the same study, 80% of B2B marketers use e-newsletters. For one thing, people still check their email. A lot. An IDC research report says that 80% of smartphone users check their phones within 15 minutes of waking up. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufeld & Byers sayspeople check their smartphones up to 150 times per day. And our favorite stat comes from a recent DemandGen report: lead nurturing emails get 4 – 10 times the response rate over one-time email blasts. This means email is going to be one of the most powerful lead nurturing tools in your toolbox.

Content Marketing

This includes blog posts, white papers, ebooks, podcasts, instructional videos, seminars, webinars, and even photos (the two most popular forms of marketing are articles and video). If you can read it, see it, or hear it, it’s content. If it entertains, educates, and excites, it’s good content. This is what builds relationships with your prospects, and gets them to trust you. Give people the right content at the right time, and they’ll come to trust you. 91% of B2B marketers say they do content marketing, but only 36% believe they’re any good at it.

Social Media Monitoring

For the most part, content marketing, email, and web are one-way communications, from you to your prospects and customers. Social media lets your customers talk back to you. They can ask questions, make complaints, and tell their friends about how great or terrible your company is. Since the average marketer uses seven different social networks, being able to listen on all of them is important. With a social media monitoring service, you can find out what people like and don’t like, and publicly respond. Imagine being able to thank people, or help resolve their problems, and do it in a way that thousands of people can see. Solving problems for people not only earns their loyalty, they’re more likely to tell their friends about the service they received, turning your customer service department into a word-of-mouth marketing machine.

Marketing Automation

Imagine being able to send specific content to specific people based on their place in the sales funnel, the length of time they’ve been there, and their individual requirements. Or, being able to create conditional workflows based on a customer’s type, job title, geography, and previous actions. Send a recorded version of your webinar to people who missed it, but skip the ones who never registered. Send opt-out emails to people who haven’t opened your newsletter in 10 months. Or send invitations to people who live within 100 miles of your next trade show. Marketing automation lets you set up fairly complex workflows that actually involve a flowchart just to follow along.

Or, you work with a marketing automation system that can incorporate all of these features into one package and even sync up with a CRM system like Salesforce. A good system will even score your leads, letting you know when someone has moved from prospect to qualified lead to buyer. A SiriusDecisions report said that 85% of B2B marketers believed they weren’t using their marketing automation to its fullest potential, so it’s important to find a system that’s robust, but still easy enough to use.